Mike looked at her.
Haruka's eyes were still on the screen. "The woman tonight. Is she nice?"
Mike recalled Madison Reed in a parking lot, her gaze fixed on him as if she had just come to the realization that they were playing a different game than she had assumed. Not nice, precisely. But real.
"She's interesting," Mike said.
"That's not the same thing," Haruka said.
"No," he agreed. "But it's what I have."
Haruka glanced at him sideways, briefly and thoughtfully. "But Petricia... our landlady was nice?"
"Petricia is interesting too," Mike said.
"In a different way?"
"In a completely different way," Mike said.
Haruka considered this. "You like interesting people."
"I like specific people," Mike said. "They happen to be interesting."
She was quiet for a moment, scrolling through something. "You know what I think?"
"Tell me," Mike said.
"I think you find people interesting the way some people find puzzles interesting," she said. "You want to see how they work."
